The Red Pyramid

Genre: Fantasy

Target Age Group: Pre-Teen/Teen

This book is the first in Rick Riordan's new series, "The Kane Chronicles". Rick Riordan is the author of "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" (fantastic series, if you'd like me to do a full review of these ones, just leave me a note) and these books are very similar. The Percy Jackson books are about the Greek Gods and these are about the Egyptian Gods. Instead of having children with mortals and creating half-bloods, the Egyptian Gods just posses people. Generally people descended from the Pharaohs, such Carter and Sadie Kane.

In this first book, Carter and Sadie find out who they are and learn all about the Egyptian Gods and their history. Of course, they have to learn all this while trying to stop the god Set from plunging the world into chaos. Maybe I better back up a little...At the beginning of the book, for reasons that I won't reveal, Sadie and Carter's dad accidentally releases 5 gods (Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set and Nephthys) from Maat, where they have been contained for thousands of years. SPOILER ALERT: All the gods but Set, immediately find someone to posses. I'm sure you can figure out who. Set however, immediately heads out to gain power and release chaos into the world. Sadie and Carter are now the only ones powerful enough to stop him.

This book made me realize that my education in the area of Egyptian history is seriously lacking. The Percy Jackson series was very easy for me to follow because I already knew all the Greek Myths. I had never even heard of most of the Egyptian Gods. So reading this book was an extremely educational experience. Like I said, it was a little harder for me to follow, but I'm very glad I put in the effort and I think that the next books in the series will be easier reads, now that I have some basic knowledge.

Recommendation: If you like fantasy and mythology, you will like this book! I would definitely recommend it for 6th graders or anyone else that wants to learn about Egyptian History.